Non-Chelsea Transfer Pub

[Jype 6,398]

14 minutes ago, Jason said:

It is really crazy that these Spurs players sign long term deals and surrender their future to someone like Daniel Levy...

With Dier it's more like he realized he's not gonna get better than Spurs anywhere else either so might as well sign?

For quality players like Kane, Son etc. it's a different situation tho.

[Jase 43,479]

2 minutes ago, Jype said:

With Dier it's more like he realized he's not gonna get better than Spurs anywhere else either so might as well sign?

For quality players like Kane, Son etc. it's a different situation tho.

Still. 4 years is a lot. It can be like serving prison time at Spurs given how Daniel Levy has been operating. 

[NikkiCFC 7,582]

9 hours ago, Vesper said:

Pep is going to start collecting short ass CB's, lol

Garcia 1.82m (some sites say 1.83m but no way do I think he is the same height as me, he looks tiny on the pitch, like 1.80 or 1.81 max)

Ake 1.80m (I think he is 1.78 or 1.79 without those locks, lolol)

Alaba 1.80m

Bayern will never sell him now but there were rumours he was interested in Lucas Hernández (1.82m)

same for the now 29yo Iñigo Martínez (1.82m)

 

 

Trying to make another Barca lol. That team was the shortest I have ever seen. Valdes, Dani Alves, Mascherano, Xavi, Iniesta, Pedro, Messi, Villa...

9 hours ago, Valdo said:

@Vesper what happened to Belotti? I remember you being really positive about him a long time ago. I don't follow serie A, but I remember him having a great season and then I basically never heard his name again.

He just scored 7 games in a row including games against Lazio, Juve, Inter... 16 goals in Seria A this season, 22 in all comps...

We do not need a striker but I do hope he moves to much bigger club than Torino. It is time for him...

[NikkiCFC 7,582]

lol

 

 

[Jase 43,479]

 

[Vesper 27,315]

‘Jude Bellingham has everything to become the most complete player in the game’

https://theathletic.com/1939766/2020/07/21/jude-bellingham-birmingham-dortmund-pep-clotet/

“Jude is one of those players who when he plays, is teaching you things,” says former Birmingham City manager Pep Clotet of Jude Bellingham, the star midfielder who has become the most expensive 17-year-old in history after completing a potential £30 million move to Bundesliga runners-up Borussia Dortmund.

It was March 2018 when Clotet arrived at Birmingham as No 2 to their new manager Garry Monk. At that time, Bellingham was a 14-year-old, playing for the club’s under-18s side, and when Clotet watched him, he immediately knew the teenager was different from his young peers. “He was well ahead in terms of development from his age group,” Clotet tells The Athletic. “He had a lot of the details that you need in order to make quick steps to go into the men’s team.”

Over the next two years, Clotet and the club’s academy staff and coaches oversaw Bellingham’s transition from youth-team player to the youngest man ever to play for Birmingham City.

Last August, he made his first-team debut under Clotet (who took over as manager after Monk’s close-season departure) at the age of 16 years and 38 days and by the time his big move to Germany was announced, he had amassed 40 appearances in the Championship this season, starting 31 games, scoring four goals and notching three assists.

Here, Clotet reveals what that development journey has looked like from the inside and why he believes Dortmund are getting a player who is capable of “touching the sky.”

Early signs

“The summer after Gary and I arrived at the club, Jude was promoted to the under-23s. Straight away, I was keen to have him training with the first team but Garry (Monk) was more conservative about it. When I was in the position to make decisions, the first thing I did was to put Jude in the team for the whole pre-season.

Why? I’ve had a lot of experience developing players and with a talent like this. You see similar things. For example: the way that they look at their own performances; being a perfectionist and understanding they have to show the best side of themselves constantly, in the way that they deal with failure and then, of course, their technical ability.

In the beginning, he still had to develop a lot physically but from the technical side, everything was there. Usually, when a player is young, he needs to see the ball all the time because he gets information with his eyes — he sees where the ball is and what it is doing. But as soon as he reaches a higher level, he gets that information from his own body, developing a level of kinaesthetic control. Once he has tha,t he knows if he touches the ball like this, the ball will stay here. If he touches it another way, it will go there. As soon as a player gets to that level of kinaesthetic control, he can start lifting his head and see what is around him more. He can start learning the tactics of the game.

It’s like when you can play the piano and you don’t need to look at the keys. Jude was already at that point. He was already playing music.

Having this kinaesthetic technical ability means that while other players receive possession of the ball and need to take some seconds to focus on it, Jude was able to focus straight away on what was happening around him. He could see the opposition coming, the movement his striker was making and process all that information immediately.

That’s the ultimate in technical development and Jude had it, which was great for us because it gave him the ability to be able to adapt to different positions quicker than other players, because he’s constantly putting his attention on the game.”

Positional matters

“My main worry was for him to understand that the demands of the position are different from when you’re playing in the youth sides. And there are some positions on the pitch that have a higher level of responsibility than others — they throw you more into situations where there can be more failures.

I chose a way of playing that was similar to the way Manuel Pellegrini had played with Villarreal, Real Madrid, and when I worked with him in Malaga. He was using a back line of four and two defensive/organised midfielders. He gave the two wide midfielders a lot of freedom offensively. They could come inside, drop and get in possession and make attacking moves, allowing the player to try and create things up front, and then use the ability of pressing afterwards.

Jude would have been perfect in a 4-3-3 playing in front of the deep-lying midfielder but in the way we were playing, that (left-sided) wide midfielder role was the closest one to that. So I taught him, ‘From here, you have the freedom to come inside and express yourself offensively. Defensively, it’s more simple work and you’re going to be less exposed to where the opposition have stronger players and that will allow you to bed into the style’.

This is nothing new. Barcelona did it with Lionel Messi in the beginning; they played him as a winger coming inside in a 4-3-3 and now he takes more of a determined role up front. It’s a good way to bed academy players into the first team — put them into positions on the pitch where they can express themselves and they are away from mistakes that can be costly for the team. Jude puts a lot of pressure on himself to do well and I never wanted him to be in a position where a mistake of his could undermine his confidence. People might not agree but playing in that position was key in his development.

Later on, I tried him in the middle too because I wanted to give him the feel of the difference in role and learn that you need to sacrifice yourself to the role. The role is always above every player — it was important for him to see that. So in some of the games where we wanted to try to have something a bit different and help creation from the midfield, I put a defensive-minded midfielder with Jude in the centre.

In terms of his future, I see him playing best in a midfield three, as one of the two offensive midfielders in front of the deep midfielder — which is exactly how Dortmund play.”

Stepping up

“I heard so many times from former colleagues, ‘He’s too young’ or ‘he will not cope with it’ but I believe that talent always finds a way through. And Jude is in a club where everyone believes in him, so it was about managing him, showing him that this step was the most important one he’s going to make in his career but that with all the support of his family and the club he will make it.

So last summer, I put him into pre-season with the first team and started treating him like the rest of the professional players. I took him with us to Portugal for the pre-season camp, where he played his first friendly games for us, and you could see he was just like another one of the team. That was very good for me because the only thing I wanted from those first two weeks was for him to become ‘one more’. It would not be easy for him to start out being a star from the beginning but I knew if we could get to the point where he was just ‘one more’, he would be at peace and we could start using him in games.

I could see that his drive and focus was excellent. When we were in the hotel, he was spot on with his food choices. When we had down time, he was resting or working on injury prevention plans — he was working constantly, chasing a dream. His first dream was to play for his hometown club and on that trip I could see that, 24 hours a day, he was chasing that.

As soon as we put him into first-team training, you could see this was a player who takes on information. He’s a player you don’t need to tell things three or four times. You tell him once, you show it to him, prove it to him, work with him on the pitch and then he takes it on board.

There were two main things we had to work on. He’s a very aggressive player and very good in a one-v-one defensively. We put a lot of work in with him to be able to delay that position — not to always try to win the ball. In a defensive one-v-one situation, you either win possession or you win your team time. We said, ‘It’s very important, Jude, that when you can win possession in a one-v=one, make sure you win us time, so we can get back into defensive organisation’. He developed that very well.

Offensively, we put a lot of work into him to understand the wall plays; the one-twos, the one-two-threes. How a player coming from a deep position like him can create problems; how to use the link between himself and the strikers, when to support the midfielders, the link between himself and the other wide midfielder.

This season, a lot of his goals or goals of the team have involved a wide midfielder coming inside, getting the right support from the midfielder, playing a one-two with the full-back and then finishing with the opposite wide midfielder. And he did that very well.

I never put a target on him for goals but I did put a target in terms of telling him, ‘You need to be a player who will bring offensive power to the team, so you need to learn all these relationships; how to play offensively with the full-back, with the midfielder and with the striker’. He became important for us as well on set plays, which is one of the details no one puts attention to but it’s so important at the high level. We worked a lot on developing his kick of the ball so he can take corners the way that we wanted.

The development training was part of our first-team training. We highlight weaknesses that the player has from footage of the games, show them to him, and then take that onto the pitch and create a little activity for him to correct these things. Afterwards, we show him when he does it well in games. It keeps the player motivated; keeps them thinking they need to do things better to help the team and pushes them to never get to a comfortable position.

Clotet gave Bellingham his debut last August and says he has the physicality, mentality and talent to be a world star (Photo: Clint Hughes/Empics/PA Images via Getty Images)

 

Jude is very ambitious and wanted to work as much as possible on these details. Alberto Escobar (Clotet’s assistant from December on) also worked with him a lot on the video side, helping us get to the point of correcting mistakes that he was making in the second part of the season and turn them into strengths.

This is the way to create value; to highlight things a player can do better and correct him and help him to be a better player in that position. This way, you have a better product than the one you started with.”

Physical attributes

“He’s right-footed but his weaker foot is not weak. His father (Mark) put in a lot of work with him when he was young to develop this technical ability. Jude’s technical level was one of the best we had in the team and you could already see that his level of quality on both feet was very similar. And that continued to develop throughout this season. Early on, you could see that when he was playing on the left, he was more comfortable coming inside and using his right foot but later on, he was using his left foot a lot as well.

The level of the player obviously comes down to his skill level, his technical level and his tactical ability. But the physical element of the game is important, too. That’s not only in competition but being able to recover quickly from efforts, being able to cope with the strength side and being able to train every day — not missing sessions with little niggles and injuries.

Jude had a good size for his age but developing the physical side was very important so we had a development programme for him — not only for the technical and tactical side through small group training but a physical programme too, to make sure he kept progressing physically.

Everyone at the club has done a fantastic job on the physical side — and his family too, who have been on top of his nutrition to help him cope with the immense amount of training and playing time that a player gets in the Championship. If you compare him now to the player in the beginning, he’s much quicker, much stronger and possibly a bit taller. He’s managed to cope very well with the demands of the work.”

Game time

“His first big game was against Portsmouth in the Carabao Cup. I put a young side out for that game and Jude was a driving force of the team. He worked very hard to create problems for the opposition. We didn’t have many options up front but he managed to be one of the strong players for us offensively. It was a reassuring game for me because I was always very worried about rushing him too much. That’s why I preferred to start him in the Carabao Cup. But that game (though Birmingham lost 3-0), I saw clearly that he was ready for more. Afterwards, I thought straight away, ‘He’s ready to start playing in the Championship’.

For me, his big game was his home debut, against Stoke in the league. Stoke had a lot of good players, most with experience in the Premier League, so it was a huge test. He came on in a difficult moment (after 30 minutes, when Jefferson Montero had to go off injured) and like a big player, he took a lot of responsibility on himself to try and win us a game at home. He was a bit raw in the beginning because it was his only his second game in the Championship and he could be a bit nervous but he tried to overcome that and always had that drive to get us going forward and chasing a result. And we ended up winning (2-1) thanks to his goal.

The way he celebrated is a video I like to see because it felt like he’d been playing on that pitch for 10 years. The way he celebrated with the fans, too — he showed a lot of confidence. I was so happy. That’s when I said. ‘He’s ready’. Straight away I thought, ‘Wow, we just signed a good player today’.

He was outstanding at Fulham this month. I used a 4-2-3-1, with Jude as a No 10. It was his most complete time on the pitch because his defensive duties were superb, his tactical understanding was superb and his offensive work was very good as well. He had clear chances to win us the game — we could have been winning 3-0 at half-time and Jude would have had a major impact on that but unfortunately, we didn’t score those chances. Even so, offensively and defensively, he was superb. I had to sub him after an hour because he’d been playing a lot of games but that had been his best performance.

During this post-lockdown time, he’s been a driving force of the team — he’s never relaxed at all. Every game he’s played after the break, he’s taken two steps forward. Against Hull, we were losing 2-0 and we managed to get back and draw 3-3 — Jude was a driving force for all these kinds of important moments.”

What kind of player are Dortmund getting?

“He’s a physical player who copes very well with physical stress and always gives 100 per cent for the team. Even though he’s an offensive player and can get himself into a lot of dangerous positions, he’s very good defensively. He’s complete — offensively and defensively.

For the nature of the player he is, he possibly has a higher level of defensive intensity than other players in that position. Physically, he’s grown a lot and got himself very strong and psychologically, he has the drive and the ambition to keep progressing.

I would like him to keep working on putting the opposition into more problems, especially around the box, because he can be really dangerous. He’s good now but when he gets older, he’s going to be even more of a player who can score goals and give assists. He’s already a bit like that but we’ve only seen the beginning of it.

I want him to keep going that way because he can be a decisive player on both sides. In my view, he has to fight to become the most complete player in the game. He has everything in his hands to do it. He can touch the sky as a player — he has no roof.”

[Special Juan 27,103]

Willian at Arsenal is getting hotter and hotter. Chelsea are still trying to negotiate to secure the Brazilian, but the Gunners’ figures are very optimistic about the signing. (via

@brunovicari

) #CFC #AFC #THFC

[OhForAGreavsie 5,775]

11 hours ago, Vesper said:

‘Jude Bellingham has everything to become the most complete player in the game’

https://theathletic.com/1939766/2020/07/21/jude-bellingham-birmingham-dortmund-pep-clotet/

Good, good player but it looks like we would not even have been his second choice destination. Such a shame, but we move on.

[Vesper 27,315]

57 minutes ago, OhForAGreavsie said:

Good, good player but it looks like we would not even have been his second choice destination. Such a shame, but we move on.

We can always come back and pay £80, £100m for him in 5, 6, 7 years, lolololol.

[Vesper 27,315]

1 hour ago, Special Juan said:

Willian at Arsenal is getting hotter and hotter. Chelsea are still trying to negotiate to secure the Brazilian, but the Gunners’ figures are very optimistic about the signing. (via

@brunovicari

) #CFC #AFC #THFC

Those thick cunts will give him a 3 year deal too, at £130K PW or so. He doesn't have to leave London and gets £20m shoved his way, pre tax.

Ffs, I SO hope he doesn't come back to haunt us. I really think he has 2 solid years left in the tank (and we all know how I am with players over 30.)

[Jase 43,479]

 

[Special Juan 27,103]

Hojbjerg to Spurs They are really pushing on.

[Special Juan 27,103]

Oshimen to Napoli and Morelos from Rangers to Lille

[NikkiCFC 7,582]

Ivanovic-Lovren

[Jase 43,479]

According to The Athletic, United are looking to get Kingsley Coman, either on loan or on a permanent deal. 

[Special Juan 27,103]

Just now, Jason said:

According to The Athletic, United are looking to get Kingsley Coman, either on loan or on a permanent deal. 

Falck said it's bullshit

[King Kante 1,297]

23 minutes ago, Jason said:

According to The Athletic, United are looking to get Kingsley Coman, either on loan or on a permanent deal. 

I rate Coman so it would be a good signing. However, there are a lot of Utd fans that are absolutely obsessed with Sancho. If this did happen, it would probably mean he wouldn't be going. If that happened you would hear tens of thousands muppet hearts breaking at once.

[Fernando 6,376]

Napoli paying big. 

I wonder if they are selling to buy this guy for 60 million?